We are committed to developing and providing sustainable and innovative solutions to pavement design.
Our collaboration with ORIS enables us to assess the carbon emissions of road projects, and quickly compare and quantify different design solutions and scenarios. The platform gathers data on locally available construction materials and international and local standards. It also considers factors like expected traffic and weather conditions to assess the life cycle carbon and cost impacts of different design options. Our collaboration will transform the industry by linking project data to materials and climate patterns and offers predictive analysis for more resilient and sustainable pavement designs and infrastructure projects.
The ORIS platform has won numerous industry awards, including the International Infrastructure Award at the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT) Awards 2022. It was also recently shortlisted for the Best Use of New Technology Award at the Highways Awards 2022.
Working with AECOM’s pavement design and asset management team, ORIS is developing its capabilities to broaden its assessments to consider all construction materials and mass haul activities.
Measuring sustainability performance
We worked with ORIS and Leicester City Council to measure the sustainability performance of our designs for the A50 Groby Road Corridor. Funded by the government’s Transforming Cities Fund and the LLEP (Leicester & Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership) Enterprise Zone funding, this road improvement project will downgrade the existing A50 in favour of a high street environment by introducing cycle lanes, new and enhanced pedestrian and cycle crossing facilities and safety improvements.
We generated multiple pavement scenarios for the different designs that considered factors including carbon emissions, cost estimation and material consumption.
Our analysis provided the client with a full range of carbon and cost calculations to help inform decision making. Using the ORIS platform and through assessing different options, a total of up to 20% cost and budget reduction of materials and between 30-38% carbon reduction over a 40-year maintenance period was demonstrated as being achievable.
Minimising environmental impact
AECOM has also used ORIS to optimise the pavement design whilst minimising the environmental impact for a 1.6km major link road scheme in the UK. Our analysis evaluated the material consumption, environmental impact and construction cost for each one of the pavement design options and allowed us to identify the most economically beneficial pavement design evaluated over a 60-year period.
To promote a circular economy, we prioritised the sourcing of local materials. The by-product derived from the local steel industry was used in the surfacing of the pavement designs to replace part of the aggregates, further reducing the consumption of natural resources while maintaining the performance standards.
Our analysis shows that costs, C02 emissions and the use of natural resources all reduced by 15%.